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2013/11/12

On 28th November, the Cambridge University Counterculture Research Group will be presenting Film, Geomancy and the Alchemical Landscape, a special event and symposium at the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge connected to Ben Wheatley's A Field in England (2013). I'll be speaking on the night along with Henry K. Miller, Brendan Gillott and Yvonne Salmon.

I've previously written about the film for Monolith and since then I've been thinking about its visual links to neo-psychedelia, particularly the work of Luke Insect who designed the poster with Kenn Goodall under the Twins of Evil moniker. Julian House of Ghost Box fame was also involved in the production of an alternative trailer for the film. In my talk on the evening I'll be trying to put my finger on the various strands of aesthetic thinking that tie these artists together. Note: the word 'hauntology' might be used...

2013/11/07

The two day event is "a collaboration between the Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge and the Arts University Bournemouth and is organised in association with the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism." It "seeks to investigate the formative role that occultism and spirituality have played in the creation of both Western and non-Western visual and material cultures."

It should be a great conference: a lot of work has gone into the organizing and the committee have booked a particularly strong line-up of keynote speakers.

I'll be giving a paper linked to The Bad Trip project that will look at Kenneth Anger, Donald Cammell and Performance. Abstract below. ﻿

Pandemonium ‘69: Magick, Performance and the ‘End of the Sixties’

In 1970,
Warner Bros. released Performance, a
film co-directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg The film featured Mick Jagger
of The Rolling Stones and exhibited thematic and structural parallels with the the
work of magician and film-maker Kenneth Anger. The film had originally been
completed in 1968 but was delayed due to a number of censorship issues
regarding its representation of sex and violence. As such, its completion and
release bookended another infamous cultural happening featuring The Rolling
Stones: their disastrous concert at the Altamont Speedway on December 6th,
1969. This event involved the death of an audience member, Meredith Hunter, at
the hands of the concert’s ‘security’, the Oakland Hells Angels and was also captured
on film by the Mayseles Brothers as part of their documentary Gimme Shelter (1970).

Speaking about Performance at the time of its eventual
release, Cammell implicitly read this proximity as an instance of synchronicity,
if not active conjuration. Whilst the film was completed “before Altamont”, he stated, the concert “actualized it.”

This oscillating
matrix of influence and absorption, event and representation underpins a
narrative arc that has come to characterize the cultural representation of the
late 1960s. An agglutination of contemporaneous popular culture (film, literature,
music, and visual art), conspiratorial thinking and retrospective re-imagining
has cast the decade as one that plotted a catastrophic trajectory from youthful
optimism to violence, death and “bad craziness”. The ‘End of the Sixties’ has
thus come to signify not the conclusion of one period within a wider historical
continuum, but the destructive eclipse of a unique and utopian culture.

With
reference to the microcosm surrounding the production of Performance and associated examples of contemporary visual culture,
my paper will investigate the role of magickal imagery and occult discourses in
the creation of this apocalyptic mirco-narrative. From Aquarian revelations to
Anger’s Luciferianism, the discussion will focus on the visual representation
of the occult in this subculture and the manner in which such strategies were
instrumental in establishing the ‘End of the Sixties’ as a trope that has
extended far beyond the end of the 1960s.

About Me

Strange Dimensions: A Paranthropology Anthology

Collection of essays edited by Jack Hunter features my essay on William Burroughs, magick and recording technology. Available now.

Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts

Annotated screenplay text with archival dossier, unpublished writings and a series of new essays. Nohzone Archive.

Framework 52: Things Fall Apart.

2 volume set of texts, documents, extracts, photographs and essays covering the life and work of Peter Whitehead. Available now from Wayne State University Press.

Selections from the Nohzone Archive.

Collection of rare photographs and previously unpublished documents covering the production of Peter Whitehead's films between 1965 and 1969. Part of the digital resource collection 'Rock n Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest'. Available now from Adam Matthew Digital.

Crash Cinema: Representation in Film

Collection of essays edited by Mark Goodall, Jill Good and Will Godfrey featuring my essay on Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962). Available now from Cambridge Scholar's Press.

Telegraph for Garlic

Collection of essays on Bram Stoker's Dracula edited by Samia Ounoughi that features my essay on Dracula and phonography. Available now from Red Rattle Books.